Zynga buys four Solitaire games for $42.5 million

Harpan's two-man team is richly rewarded for its social card titles

Zynga has acquired four mobile apps from Harpan LLC, a two-man studio specialising in Solitaire games, for $42.5 million.

The cash deal was finalised on February 14 this year, but it was only mentioned briefly in a recent SEC filing, spotted by SeekingAlpha. More details will follow in Zynga's Q1 financial report, but we know that it covers four Solitaire games.

Harpan, the developer, only has two people on its team: Tim Oswald, who is based in Austin, Texas, and his brother William Oswald, who is based in Chicago. The studio's most popular game is Solitaire, which according to App Annie, is currently at the top of the iOS download chart in the US, and within the top 20 games overall.

Business Insider noted that Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau talked about Harpan onstage at a Morgan Stanley event, placing it in the context of a broader strategy to monetise social card games through advertising.

Zynga posted losses of $108 million for calendar 2016, on revenue of $741.4 million.

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Great shame.
Still, for anyone wanting the best Spectrum handheld device, you can do no better than grabbing an old DS Lite and a homebrew cartridge. There are some great Spectrum emulators for the Nintendo DS, they're free and best of all the Nintendo DS screen resolution is pixel for pixel the same as the Spectrum.